Destroy My Belief System, Please!

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

So without further ado: Why should I ever believe in facts that the balance of the evidence does not support? Why should I ever believe in values that, when acted on, increase suffering or diminish happiness overall? Or as I said in the first place: Destroy my belief system, please!

Sorry, it can't be done. You only need to defend your belief once to get stuck with it the rest of your life. Now if your able to convince yourself that you were unintentionally brainwashed, and wasn't in control, you could blame it for being who and what you are, and free yourself from every bad thing you ever did.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

There's no 'counter-factual' -- you'd have to figure out what the damage inflicted by terrorists on to (say) the US would be without the war on terror. And you could let your imagination run wild and theorize a counter-factual scenario where the entire US is in smoldering ashes as a result of AQ's unrestrained activity...

That's a problem with not knowing what the facts are, not a confusion about the ethics. I don't know of any argument in natural-rights ethics, or Kantian ethics, or common-sense ethics, that can tell you independent of facts just when wiretapping is ethical. And these other schools of thought don't know these facts, either.

Olivier wrote:

In practice, few would believe the validity of your results, anyway you compute them.

Maybe not. Your point?

1 Reply

@Jack of Hearts,

Jack of Hearts wrote:

A personal value system based upon happiness without suffering allows for sharing porn with eager children, or one would think.

Sure. I can think of facts persuading me that sharing porn with children is wrong. For example, premature exposure to porn might scar the relationships the children will enter once they grow up. But if no such harm occurs, sharing porn with children is fine with me.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

That's a problem with not knowing what the facts are, not a confusion about the ethics. I don't know of any argument in natural-rights ethics, or Kantian ethics, or common-sense ethics, that can tell you independent of facts just when wiretapping is ethical. And these other schools of thought don't know these facts, either.

The point is: there are no facts to assess objectively in this case. You cannot compare the consequences of the war on terror with what would have happened without the war on terror, because you can't rewind or rewrite history. And any attempt to summon up a theoretical counter-factual will be tainted by what you want to prove out of this comparison.

Ergo values cannot be based on facts. They are not and cannot be objectively derived from experience. They are learned from parents and other social influences.

Quote:

Maybe not. Your point?

Values are also a social contract. They are discussed and promoted in the social space, e.g. through "culture wars". They are not something useful for individuals only, they are a social good. It makes little objective sense to respect, say, private property in a society that doesn't do so. "In Rome, do as Romans do". It makes no sense to determine that the war on terror is not cost-effective, just for the pleasure of computing it... If you compute that, you will want to share the result so that people realise it's a waste of resources and the war on terror is stopped, right? And if your contribution to that discussion is to estimate the financial cost of the people who died in 9/11, you won't convince many people around you...

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

The point is: there are no facts to assess objectively in this case.

I disagree with this, but I'm willing to run with it for the sake of the argument. Suppose there truly was no evidence on how well people like their government spying on them. Further suppose there was no evidence about on how well the "war on terror" is reducing terror. Then I contend I can't tell whether the war on terror is morally right or wrong. And if I still believed in natural rights, or if I was to become a Kantian or a virtue ethicist, I couldn't tell it, either.

Olivier wrote:

Values are also a social contract.

While it is true that my values influence how I behave towards my fellow humans, I don't see where a social contract comes in. For example, suppose I lived in the antebellum American South and I helped fugitive slaves escape the law. In doing so, I would be helping people deemed incapable of forming contracts, and would be breaking the social contract of my society. Still, it would be consistent with my values, because my actions help relieve a lot more pain from the ex-slaves than they cause from the slaveholders they ran away from. How does the social contract make any difference here?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:
The point is: there are no facts to assess objectively in this case.

I disagree with this, but I'm willing to run with it for the sake of the argument. Suppose there truly was no evidence on how well people like their government spying on them.

You can always collect evidence so that's not the issue. The issue is: how? Who does it and through what process, so that the result is seen as legitimate? I contend that a cost-benefit analysis is never going to be as efficient and legitimate a process as a fair vote. Democracy is the best way an egalitarian society can decide on matters of public policy. Just ask the people, don't second-guess their interest through econometrics.

Quote:

Further suppose there was no evidence about on how well the "war on terror" is reducing terror. Then I contend I can't tell whether the war on terror is morally right or wrong. And if I still believed in natural rights, or if I was to become a Kantian or a virtue ethicist, I couldn't tell it, either.

Again, at the level of public policy, there are other sources of legitimacy than pure philosophy... We don't live in a dictatorship of moral experts, or perhaps we do, but shouldn't. Experts can be wrong. Are they going to pay the price for being wrong, when that happens?

You are however right at the individual value system level. Here, public policy issues are: how should I vote on such and such issue? Should I campaign for or against something, etc. And you can try all manners of utilitarian thought experiments weighing war and peace, veggies and meat, gays and straights etc, inside your head. That's fine and many people reason like that.

Quote:

Olivier wrote:
Values are also a social contract.

While it is true that my values influence how I behave towards my fellow humans, I don't see where a social contract comes in. For example, suppose I lived in the antebellum American South and I helped fugitive slaves escape the law. In doing so, I would be helping people deemed incapable of forming contracts, and would be breaking the social contract of my society. Still, it would be consistent with my values, because my actions help relieve a lot more pain from the ex-slaves than they cause from the slaveholders they ran away from. How does the social contract make any difference here?

Still, why do you assess the pain of the slave as worth the same as the pain of the master? Isn't that quite literally a value, called Egalité where I come from?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Democracy is the best way an egalitarian society can decide on matters of public policy. Just ask the people, don't second-guess their interest through econometrics.

I agree that democracy is a good system. Accordingly, and throughout history, utilitarians have tended to advocate for democracy, and for broadening the franchise in democracies that already existed. The limitation of democracy is that it has no way of accounting for the intensity of people's preferences. You will vote for policy A over policy B, no matter if your preference is marginal or if your life depends on A. Markets and econometrics don't have this limitation. (They have others instead. I agree that the best way to correct market failure is through regulations by a democratic legislature.)

Olivier5 wrote:

Still, why do you assess the pain of the slave as worth the same as the pain of the master? Isn't that quite literally a value, called Egalité where I come from?

It is. So what? I still don't see where a social contract would enter into my values.

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I believe our values change as we get older and/or when circumstances dictates what we believe as the best solution. No issue is static, and nor are we.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

It is. So what?

That value -- equality -- cannot be based on a utilitarian / econometric calculus, since it is an axiom or hypothesis for such calculus.

Quote:

I still don't see where a social contract would enter into my values.]

A different issue, but because of the expectation for reciprocity. As for instance in saying the truth, respect for private property, or faithfullness in marriage.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
It is. So what?

That value -- equality -- cannot be based on a utilitarian / econometric calculus, since it is an axiom or hypothesis for such calculus.

Yes. The stipulation that everyone's interests count the same is part of my utilitarian belief system. And promoting political equality is one of my values because it will reduce the suffering of previously-helpless people more than it increases the suffering of the previously-mighty. How is that inconsistent with anything I said?

Thomas wrote:

I still don't see where a social contract would enter into my values.]

Olivier5 wrote:

A different issue, but because of the expectation for reciprocity. As for instance in saying the truth, respect for private property, or faithfullness in marriage.

But in the scenario I described a few posts ago, the runaway slaves will not reciprocate: A month from now they'll either be out of my state or returned to their master, having gotten caught. And in my society, respect for private property imposes a duty to return the slaves to their owners immediately. I certainly could not lie to a bounty hunter or a policeman in order to protect the slaves I'm hiding. Sorry, but I have to repeat my question yet again: What does the social contract have to do with my values, as applied to the case of the runaway slave? The only relation I see is that I break the social contract because of my values --- as would you, I suspect.

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Quote:

Yes. The stipulation that everyone's interests count the same is part of my utilitarian belief system.

A part which is given a priori, not proven through a utilitarian argument. It's a value at the core of the philosophy, at its root. It's a belief, not a fact.

Quote:

But in the scenario I described a few posts ago, the runaway slaves will not reciprocate: A month from now they'll either be out of my state or returned to their master, having gotten caught.

Yes, but in most life scenarios there an expectation of reciprocators in values. I treat you well if you treat me well.

Quote:

The only relation I see is that I break the social contract because of my values --- as would you, I suspect.

Values are not ALWAYS tradable or shareable; one can also keep on one's own values and not trade them. IOW some people don't do as Romans do, even in Rome. But they often try and convince other through militancy, and that's indeed just another form of social exchange.

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I don't think your belief system will be destroyed from within, but from without. It would depend on the circumstances in your environment that you perceive to be unfair or untenable, and the choices available to you as an individual.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

A part which is given a priori, not proven through a utilitarian argument. It's a value at the core of the philosophy, at its root. It's a belief, not a fact.

And that's exactly the way I stated it --- as a belief. You've got a problem with that?

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@Thomas,

No problem at all, as long as you realize that you hold on deerly (and rightly) to values that are not really fact-based.

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@Olivier5,

Also, the person stating a moral belief cannot also be the judge of it.

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@Olivier5,

Deerly?

reely?

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@cicerone imposter,

What do you maen?

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@cicerone imposter,

What do you mean?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

I believe people of religion think and believe they have good morals, but many do not "live" by those morals. They may serve in the military and kill other people. Who is the judge to say whether they have lived up to their morals?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

No problem at all, as long as you realize that you hold on deerly (and rightly) to values that are not really fact-based.

I do realize that. That's why I have separate tenets for the values I believe in and the facts I believe in.

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Destroy My Belief System, Please!

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